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Weathered Keys...

2FDAFC

i sat on a cloud
in the light of the moon
and sang right out loud
to a brand new tune

i knew you would listen
if i sang from my heart
while watching waves glisten
to moonlight~in the dark

so with fingertips gliding
over my piano keys
pounding and sliding
my song was the tease

i looked all around
and saw the vast blue sky
but then i looked down
and saw tears in your eyes...

music is so soothing
it mends a broken heart
life's wrinkles need soothing
so play it from the start...

even if only an old song
hummed softly in your mind
you can never go wrong
with any song you can find

~tolbert~

Grandiose Remains

Are you there
little essence of nothing?
Flaunting your invisibility
as if to be luminous
among the stars...
Polishing your loneliness
and painstakingly
brushing the dust from your bones...
Hoping to silently sparkle
like the jewels
that murdered you......

j.k.

the swing set

feet pushing
careening through sheer space
gliding, kicking, catapultingupward, outwardglazing over gravity on a swingforever falling from the sky

as a child i never asked whystepping over cracks in the sidewalkchalking hopscotch squaresever fearful of getting mud on white shoesi startlingly stumbled into the blues'twas the sadness, madness misting my eyes

resounding, reverberatingno one heard my criesstolen by the wind whirlsentangling my crimson curlscaught up in a cauldronwhere everything dies

Nagyapa Ki

Sliding hands over musty wooden banisters,
picking up splinters along the way.

Decades of tenants climbed worn rickety steps,
while gold and maroon paisley carpet
harbored a good home for dust mites.

Seven staircases to reach the top, and one could
inhale the pungent aroma from every apartment
they climbed past, blending the herbs and
spices of Eastern European tradition.

Out of breath, the seventh floor reeked with
familiarity.

My five year-old eyes raised in apprehension at
the sleeveless undershirt in the doorway.

The old man never spoke to me, and as his
perspiration loomed through the hallway entering
the tiny quarters,

I was too fascinated with the glass bowl full of
butterscotch balls atop old mahogany to note my
unimportance.

Grandma never wore the shoes in the family, but
she always brought the old man his slippers...

j.k.

...it was just a dusty old piano
whose song had long since grown quiet

so i sat at the keys
and said "piano, would you please?

i have one song left...may i try it?"

for the first time in years i played a new song
then i bowed to an audience of none

and when i walked away from the antique piano
the silence of music was done...

...and since that moment
i have known that music is silence~
given new life...

~tolbert~

The Power of Song, The Dominion of Music

these words have never left me since i first heard the song
"gentle on my mind" many years ago...i truly feel the words
have become one of the greatest poems ever written. thinking
of the many people over time, separated, yet all the space in
between them could never sever the ties linking time and
thought forever...

Gentle On My Mind

This song, written by John Hartford, won four 1968 Grammy awards,
including one for Hartford for Best Folk Performance, and an award
for Glen Campbell, (for whom the song is best remembered) for Best
Country and Western Solo Vocal Performance, Male.

Hartford's inspiration for this song was the movie Doctor Zhivago.
After watching the movie, he sat down and wrote the lyrics in about
fifteen minutes.

Gentle On My Mind - by John Hartford

It's knowing that your door is always open
And your path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag
Rolled up and stashed behind your couch
And it's knowing I'm not shackled
By forgotten words and bonds
And the ink stains that have dried upon some line
That keeps you in the backroads
By the rivers of my mem'ry
That keeps you ever gentle on my mind

It's not clinging to the rocks and ivy
Planted on their columns now that binds me
Or something that somebody said
Because they thought we fit together walking
It's just knowing that the world will not be cursing
Or forgiving when I walk along some railroad track and find
That you are moving on the backroads
By the rivers of my mem'ry
And for hours you're just gentle on my mind

Though the wheat fields and the clothes lines
And the junkyards and the highways come between us
And some other woman crying to her mother
'Cause she turned and I was gone
I still might run in silence tears of joy might stain my face
And the summer sun might burn me 'til I'm blind
But not to where I cannot see you walkin' on the backroads
By the rivers flowing gentle on my mind

I dip my cup of soup back from the gurglin'
Cracklin' caldron in some train yard
My beard a roughened coal pile and
A dirty hat pulled low across my face
Through cupped hands 'round a tin can
I pretend I hold you to my breast and find
That you're waving from the backroads
By the rivers of my mem'ry
Ever smilin' ever gentle on my mind